Professor Mode

What is Professor Mode?

Professor mode allows a group of people to watch you write code live in a real time classroom. Every character you type, line you select, or setting you change is immediately shown on your viewers (students) screens, as if you were all together looking at the same screen.

How many people can watch at one time?

Maximum class size depends on your PRO subscription type.

Starter PRO: 10 viewers

Developer PRO: 35 viewers

Super PRO: 100 viewers

If more students come to the classroom to watch, they will get a message letting them know the room is full. They will automatically be let in when other students leave and there are open spots.

How do I start a new "Professor Mode" classroom?

You must be a PRO subscriber to open a Professor Mode classroom. You can create a classroom from any existing Pen that you own. Either open a Pen you've already created, or if you want to start from scratch, just create a new Pen, type a few characters of HTML, and save it.

You can then switch to Professor Mode from the "Change View" dropdown menu at the upper right.

What happens if I (the teaching professor) leave the room?

CodePen will attempt to warn you before you leave the room with an alert popup asking you if you're sure you wish to navigate away. This is to prevent you from accidentally closing the window through an unintentional keyboard command or gesture, or anything else that might take you away.

If you do leave the room, either on purpose or through an accident beyond your control (e.g. a browser crash) you'll have one minute to re-enter the room. After that, the room will be closed and students will receive a pop-up message that the professor has left the room.

You can always re-open it, but you'll need to have the students refresh the page or send them the link again so they can navigate back to the room.

Chat and Moderation

As the professor, you are the only one who can type code into the editors.

There is a chat area where you and any students watching the room can leave chat messages. You and your students can open the chat by clicking the "Open Chat" tab at the bottom of the editor.

As the teaching professor, you can delete any comment a student leaves by hovering over that comment and clicking the (X) link that comes up.

Students can also delete their own comments if they wish.

You do not have the ability to completely remove someone from watching your session.

How do I invite people to watch my Professor Mode session?

However you want! You can copy the URL out of the URL bar (or get it from the Share dropdown menu) and share it on Twitter or Facebook or any other social network. You could IM people you know. You could send out a mass email. Any way you can think of to share the link is fine with us.